Developers at the GDC 2024 event.
Developers at the GDC 2024 event.
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GDC survey reveals a rocky year of layoffs and AI skepticism for game developers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 9 min

The 2025 GDC survey revealed the impact of industry-wide layoffs in 2024 where one of every 11 game developers lost a job. It also showed game developer opinions about AI, funding challenges and unionization.

The survey is conducted each year by the Game Developers Conference, which takes place from March 17 to March 21 in San Francisco. Along with Matthew Ball’s recent analysis of the state of gaming and last year’s report, I believe this helps give a solid picture of gaming’s reality today.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.